Trial and error?: The impact of restricting jury trials on court demand

The government is proposing to almost halve the number of jury trials

In early December the recently installed justice secretary, David Lammy, unveiled plans to radically restrict the number of jury trials that take place each year in England and Wales. This change is in response to the ever-growing case backlog in the crown court, which sits at almost 80,000, up 12% since the general election and more than double what it was at the end of 2019. ⁴¹ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.   The proposals are similar to recommendations in phase one of the Independent Review of Criminal Courts, commissioned by Lammy’s predecessor as justice secretary Shabana Mahmood in 2024 and led by Sir Brian Leveson – though with a few crucial differences.

Currently, the vast majority of criminal prosecutions are handled without a jury. More than 90% are dealt with by magistrates’ courts, before a single district judge or a panel of two to three magistrates. ⁴² Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.  These offences include things like common assault (where no one is injured), simple drug possession and many theft offences. The judge or magistrates decide the verdict and, if the defendant is found guilty, either sentence them themselves (up to a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison) or send them to the crown court for sentencing if they think a longer sentence is needed. The remaining 10% of cases are sent to the crown court for trial, where about 20–25% of defendants will plead not guilty and get a jury trial. ⁴³ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.

There are three key elements to the government’s proposals:

1. Encouraging magistrates’ to hear more cases by raising their maximum sentencing powers from 12 to 18 months, with the possibility of further increasing them to two years.
2. Introducing judge-only trials for around a quarter of crown court trials, known as ‘swift courts’ or the ‘crown court bench division’.
3. Removing the right of defendants in moderately serious (‘either-way’) cases to decide if they want to be tried in a magistrates’ court or the crown court.

The Ministry of Justice estimates that if these reforms are enacted slightly less than half of trials that would currently be heard by a jury would instead be heard by magistrates (around a third) or a judge alone (around a sixth). ⁴⁴ Lammy D, Justice Committee oral evidence session, 16 December 2025   All of the most serious ‘indictable only’ cases, such as robbery, rape and the most serious violent assaults, will continue to be eligible for a jury trial. Only moderately serious ‘either-way’ cases will be eligible to be heard in magistrates’ courts or by a judge alone: this covers a wide range of offences like fraud, serious theft, drug supply and most weapons offences.

The proposals would most likely reduce demand on the courts, particularly the crown court, where the case backlog and delays are most severe. But these would be relatively minor gains, given the institutional upheaval, political controversy and likely damage to public confidence from substantially reducing access to jury trials.

Only a small proportion of crown court demand is in scope for these reforms

These measures would reduce demand on the crown court, in both the number of cases and the total amount of time it takes to hear those cases. But the reductions are not substantial – while the number of jury trials will fall by around half, the time it takes to hear cases is likely to fall less than 10%. There are three reasons for this:

1. A lot of court time is spent handling other types of case and hearings.
2. The trials moving to the ‘bench division’ or magistrates’ courts will be the least serious cases in the crown court, which on average only take half as long to hear as the most serious cases.
3. Judge-only trials are estimated to be 20% quicker than jury trials, ⁵² Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part 1, 2025.   but will only account for around a quarter of crown court trials, so the overall impact is likely to be extremely marginal. 

About a third of court time is not spent on jury trials

Jury trials currently take up 65–70% of hearing hours in the crown court. ⁵³ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.  That includes all the time when the court is actually in session: from deciding on applications for bail to hearing evidence during the trial and passing sentence, among other things. Not all of the work that happens in the court is captured by hearing time as lots of crucial work goes on around hearings, but this can be taken as a rough proxy for the overall amount of time the court spends doing different things.

So what is the court doing when it is  not dealing with jury trial cases? Various things: hearings for other types of cases like plea hearings, bail applications, and sentencing hearings and so on for people who plead guilty, have been convicted in magistrates’ courts, or whose cases get dropped before making it to trial. These make up a large and growing proportion of demand on the court – about a third of court hearing time in 2024.

 Other reforms planned in addition to restrictions on jury trials may reduce this, particularly the increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers and any planned changes to the allocation guidance, that helps magistrates decide when a case should be sent to the crown court for trial. If that means more guilty plea cases are also heard in magistrates’ courts, as well as trials, that would reduce demand on the crown court further. 

But the government is yet to set out exactly what its plans are on this, so it is not currently possible to model its impact. Previous increases to magistrates’ court sentencing powers, in 2022 and 2024, seem to have led to only small reductions – around 1 percentage point – in the proportion of cases that get sent to the crown court for trial (though there is a larger impact on committals for sentence). ⁵⁴ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal justice system statistics quarterly: June 2025’, Magistrates court data tool, 2025.   

Even if the number of either-way guilty plea cases heard in the crown court were cut by a third, that would only reduce total time spent on these cases by around 2%, given the increase in demand on magistrates’ courts. ⁵⁵ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.  In practice, even this large an impact is unlikely. Magistrates’ court guidance already indicates that they should hear for trial any case expected to attract a sentence of up to 18 months, ⁵⁶ Ministry of Justice, ‘Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Powers: extending sentencing powers from maximum 6 months to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single Triable Either-Way offence on summary conviction’, impact assessment, 2024, accessed 19 January 2026, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2024/155/pdfs/ukia_20240155_en.pdf  although these currently need to be committed to the crown court for sentencing (defendants can also currently choose to have a crown court trial if they wish, but this occurs in a relatively small proportion of all cases sent for trial). ⁵⁷ Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part 1, 2025.

The most serious cases take much longer to deal with – and will continue to be jury trials

There is wide variation in how long it takes to deal with different types of jury trial. The most serious ‘indictable only’ jury trial cases take more than twice as long on average to hear as moderately serious ‘either-way’ cases.   Under the MoJ’s plans all indictable only trials will continue to be heard by a jury in the crown court; these currently make up more than half of jury trials and almost half (45%) of all hearing hours, compared to a fifth for less serious either-way cases. ⁵⁸ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.

On top of this, the more serious either-way cases will also still be heard by a jury: defendants facing a likely sentence of three years or more in prison will still be entitled to a jury trial. This applies to more than a quarter of defendants convicted after trial at the crown court. Data is not available on how long these specific cases take, but again it is likely that as they are more serious, they take longer to try than the average either-way case – quite possibly 30–50% longer.

Together, these more serious cases make up the large majority of court time spent on jury trials – around three quarters. Once these cases and the other case types discussed above are excluded, over 80% of demand on the crown court is out of scope of the reforms to jury trials.

Judge-only trials will account for a very small proportion of demand 

As discussed above, around a quarter of trials that reach the crown court will be dealt with by a judge sitting alone in the ‘bench division’. This is only likely to amount to a few thousand cases. If the MoJ’s estimate that these cases will be heard 20% quicker is correct, that would save less than 2% of total court time. Even if they have underestimated the impact and cases save 30% of court time across all hearings, that would reduce total demand by 2.5%. Given the uncertainty around whether this will be realised and the risks of having judges sitting alone to decide both verdict and sentence, this is a very marginal gain. 

In total, these reforms will likely save less than 10% of court time – and judge-only trials just 2%

What does this mean for the total impact of these measures on court demand? It is likely to be around a 7–10% reduction in total time taken in the courtroom, with just 1.5–2.5% of that coming from the introduction of judge-only trials in the crown court bench division. This is roughly in line with the estimated savings from phase one of the criminal courts review, though that seemed to suggest a larger proportion of time being saved by the bench division, ⁶⁰ Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, Independent Review of the Criminal Courts: Part 1, 2025.  likely because of differences in the details of the reforms being proposed.

Set out below are three scenarios based on the MoJ’s high-level estimates of trial case numbers. They are all based on likely figures in 2026/27. Even the most optimistic scenario – where fewer crown court trials go before a jury, judge-only trials save 30% of court time rather than 20% and more cases stay in magistrates’ court – saves only about 10% of court time.

The total impact in terms of workload is highly dependent on the overall level of crown court demand. If the number of cases entering the system increases significantly more than suggested here, the reforms will save correspondingly more sitting days. If the case mix changes, this will also have an impact; in particular, if there are more either-way trials and fewer of the most serious indictable only trials, the relative demand savings would be significantly greater. The reverse is also true, however, and so far in 2025 the number of indictable only cases entering the system has risen faster than either-way cases. ⁶² Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2025’, 2025.

Productivity improvements would deliver faster and more substantial benefits than the proposed reforms

Saving 7-10% of court time would make a meaningful difference to the functioning of the courts and the case backlog. It would effectively hold workload in the crown court steady around its current level, or slightly below. That would mean the government’s planned additional investment in sitting days could be focused on working through the backlog and reducing the time it takes for cases to get to trial. 

But the impacts are still highly uncertain and it is likely to take at least two years before they are felt, quite possibly more. It is not until 2029 that the government hopes the case backlog will begin to fall. And the changes will not be easy to enact, practically or politically: the proposed measures are highly contentious, and strong resistance – especially to judge-only trials – among criminal lawyers and some judges will only make things harder on both counts. 

The government is likely to have a fight on its hands to get legislation through the House of Lords, even if it passes the Commons. The ground seems especially shaky for judge-only trials, given these will provide only marginal savings and the move most risks damaging public confidence in the criminal justice system. 

There is an alternative which enjoys broad support across the sector and could begin much faster: improving court productivity. Productivity is at the heart of the problem in the criminal courts. The crown court is hearing almost 20% fewer hours per sitting day so far in 2025/26 than it was in 2016/17. If it had got through an equivalent number of cases per day in 2024 as in 2016, the case backlog would have fallen by at least a few thousand. Instead, it grew by nearly 8,000 (10%).

Our recent Public Services Performance Tracker 2025 explored some of the reasons behind the widening productivity gap that has opened up in the crown court in recent years. These include a shortage of criminal lawyers, poor court administration and a long-running lack of investment in court buildings and physical and technological infrastructure. These are not quick or easy problems to fix, but even so there are opportunities for meaningful improvements before 2029. These could be done alongside more moderate proposals to handle some more cases in magistrates’ courts, which would be less likely to provoke backlash.

Initial steps like matched funding for criminal pupillages ⁶⁸ Lammy D, Justice Committee oral evidence session, 16 December 2025  (barrister trainee positions) and increasing criminal legal aid fees ⁶⁹ The Law Society, ‘Criminal legal aid’, 1 December 2025, accessed 22 December 2025, https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/legal-aid/criminal-legal-aid  are welcome and should help to restore criminal lawyer numbers. Similarly, increased maintenance funding ⁷⁰ Lammy D, Justice Committee oral evidence session, 16 December 2025  should reduce time lost to broken fire alarms and flooded court rooms. 

But more can be done. The government should focus on understanding what is driving differences in court productivity around the country, with crown courts in Liverpool and much of Wales consistently cited as high performers. ⁷¹ Institute for Government stakeholder engagement, 2025.  Are there particular approaches to how cases are listed for trial or judicial behaviour that could be applied elsewhere? What explains the wide variation in the proportion of trials rescheduled at the last minute?

Phase two of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts is focused on court efficiency and should address many of these key questions. Publication is now expected in spring 2026. Sir Brian Leveson has previously stated that he does not think a “modest change” from efficiency improvements will be enough to get to grips with the situation and bring the case backlog down. ⁷² Leveson, B, Justice Committee oral evidence session, 11 November 2025, https://committees.parliament.uk/event/25520/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/  But as the chart above suggests, the potential benefits of returning crown court productivity to 2016 levels substantially outweigh the likely demand savings from the structural reforms the government is proposing. That is where the government should start.

Annex: Full modelling results and methodological assumptions

In both reform scenarios, the number of jury trials is notably above the 7,500 of 15,000 suggested by the government. This is because typically at least half of jury trials currently are for indictable only offences, which are not affected by the proposed reforms. Of the other half of cases, as least some (~20–30%) will be likely to attract a sentence of more than three years, and so will still be tried by a jury.

Also included below is an estimate of the savings from implementing the proposals to conduct more trials in magistrates’ courts, without introducing judge-only trials (the ‘swift courts’/crown court bench division). This assumes the same number of cases would be diverted to magistrates’ courts as in the central reform scenario, but that all crown court cases continue to be heard by a jury.